The Long View

The Evolution of Cost-Plus Health Care

The story of American health insurance is clearly not a story of intelligent design.

Evolution has no foresight. It often stumbles down an irreversible path that produces a design inferior to what might be ideal. Vertebrates, by chance, evolved a system of focusing the eye whereby tiny muscles alter the shape of the lens. Unfortunately, as our lenses age, they become less flexible. By middle age, it becomes impossible to focus on things that are close. So if you have passed your mid-40s, you're probably reading this with glasses, no matter how good your eyes were when you were 20.